Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Dogfish Head Chateau Jiahu Clone 1.0

A finished bottle of Chateau El Dorado

As I mentioned in yesterday's post on brewing a Ta Henket clone, another of my most-favorite Dogfish brews is Chateau Jiahu. This beer is loosely based on an ancient recipe for beer from China, uncovered by Dr. Patrick McGovern and published in his book Ancient Ales: Rediscovered and Re-Created. I bought the ingredients I needed, thinking that I had some Simcoe hops around from a previous brew (but didn't).

Substitution Time
When it came down to brew day, I discovered that there were three things I couldn't readily get my hands on at the time: sake yeast, white grape concentrate, and Simcoe hops.

I thought I had Simcoe in my freezer, but didn't. I did have some El Dorado hops, which aren't a recognized substitute for Simcoe but sound like they might be interesting in this beer. I didn't have another use planned for them, so they made the ingredient list.

White grape juice concentrate was something I'd seen in local groceries in years past, but could not find in the days leading up to brew day. Research suggested that the muscat grape concentrate and the Welch's variety were both roughly 3 times stronger than natural juice. So instead of the 16 ounces of concentrate, I decided I would use 64 ounces of off-the-shelf organic white grape juice instead. This should provide the same amount of grape flavor that the concentrate would have, and presumably the same amount of fermentables.

I probably could have gotten sake yeast by mail order. But I watched the old TV series Brew Masters where we see the Dogfish Head experts having to dump an entire batch of Chateau Jiahu because the sake yeast just wouldn't cooperate. I decided to use the book's recommended alternative of Lallemand Abbaye Yeast instead. I like Belgian yeasts anyway, and this might (to me) improve the aroma and flavor of the beer.

According to BeerSmith, the finished beer should have these estimated characteristics:

Original Gravity: 1.068 SG or 16.6 Brix

Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.042 SG or 10.5 Brix

Final Gravity: 1.004 SG or 7.2 Brix (estimated and adjusted for alcohol)

Volume: 5.0 gallons

IBUs: 11.1

SRM: 5.0

ABV: 8.5%

BU:GU: 0.16

After brewing, the following characteristics were measured:

Pre-boil Gravity: 12.2 Brix (vs. 10.5 expected)

Original Gravity: 16.6 Brix (vs. 16.6 expected)

Volume in Fermenter: 6.0 gallons (vs. 5.0 gallons expected)

In the end, in order to get the original gravity where I wanted it after adding the honey and grape juice, I needed to add approximately 3 quarts of water. This yielded 6.0 gallons in the fermenter at the intended original gravity of 16.6 Brix or 1.068 SG.

Brewing

I began by putting 5 gallons of water in my Grainfather kettle and dropping in a Campden Tablet to remove any chlorine or chloramine in the water.

Pre-boil: Added DME and Rice Syrup Solids, dissolving well

60 minutes: No additions

45 minutes: Removed some wort, covering Hawthorn Berries with it and ran an immersion blender through it to puree the berries. The immersion blender had trouble with the berries as they are very dry and dense. If I do this recipe again, I'll use a full-size kitchen blender and maybe soak the berries in boiling water for a while instead of waiting to use wort.

30 minutes: Add the pureed berries to the wort

10 minutes: Added the El Dorado hops and sweet orange peel

7 minutes: Circulated boiling wort through the counter flow chiller to sterilize it

0 minutes: Turned off heat, added Orange Blossom honey and white grape juice, and whirlpooled for a few minutes before pumping through chiller into fermenter

The beer was one of the nicest-smelling brews I've ever smelled coming out of the kettle.

Fermentation

The beer was pumped into the fermenter and topped off with cold water to reach the desired original gravity.

The Abbaye yeast was pitched dry onto the wort, since this method has served me well in the past. The fermenter was left to ferment naturally with no temperature control.

Bottling

On October 7, 2017, I added 6.25 ounces of corn sugar to boiling water to prime the beer for bottling. The beer was transferred from its fermenter into the bottling bucket atop this priming sugar. The gravity transfer ensured that the beer swirled and mixed in the sugar as it transferred.

Since my main temperature-controlled bottle conditioning setup is busy trying to carbonate the Palo Santo Marron clone, I put as much of this batch as I could fit into a plastic storage bin with a fermwrap heater to serve as a secondary conditioning chamber. The beer will spend two weeks in this container at 76F, after which I'll move the rest of the batch into the bin for a week.

I'm expecting to be able to do a taste test around October 22. I'll be back to update this page then.

Side By Side Comparison

I thought it would be useful to compare the clone beer to the real thing. Fortunately, I had a bottle of Chateau Jiahu in the fridge that I could compare with my version.

Clone on the left, real Chateau Jiahu on the right

A friend of mine, in the background of the above photo, volunteered to lend his expert palate to the task of comparing my "Jiahu El Dorado" to real Dogfish Head Chateau Jiahu.

We agreed that strictly as a clone of the real Chateau Jiahu, the beer was a failure. The real beer is darker, as you can see above. The real beer has a slightly hoppy aroma to it that the clone does not. The flavor of the two beers is similar, but the clone lacks the pine and resin notes in the real Chateau Jiahu. The citrus comes through more in the clone than in the real beer. The grape notes in the real beer are more like ripe fruit, while those in the clone are slightly tart. If I was trying to adjust this recipe to get closer to the real Chateau Jiahu, I would incorporate some caramel malt as a steeping grain in the next version. I would use the Simcoe hops the recipe called for rather than the El Dorado hops I used. I think those simple changes might bring the two beers closer together.

Having said that, my friend and I also agreed that while Jiahu El Dorado might not be enough like the Dogfish Head brew to be considered a clone, we actually preferred it to the real beer. The pine and resin notes in the Dogfish Brew seemed to conflict with the fruit backdrop, and seemed harsher than the hops notes in the clone. I think using El Dorado hops (while a last-minute substitution) made the beer better than if I had used the Simcoe hops the recipe called for. The addition of clementine zest at flameout also seemed to add something to the beer.

In the end, while we liked both beers, we felt the clone was the better of the two. That was a conclusion I did not expect at the start of the taste test.

Post-Mortem and Other Notes

In the brewing, the hawthorn berry puree was the biggest nuisance. The dried berries are very, very tough and hard to break up with a hand blender. Next time, I would probably use boiling water and a full-size blender. I would also let the berries soak overnight in the boiling water in a sealed container to give them a chance to rehydrate better. That might (or might not) improve the flavor of the beer.

I was impatient to try the beer, so I opened a bottle after only a week of bottle conditioning. That's the one in the picture at the top of this post. It had a nice level of carbonation. When first poured into the glass, it had a thin and very active head on it. This dissipated so rapidly that it was gone by the time I photographed it.

10/22/2017: Based on the results of the taste test, I've decided that when I make this beer again (and I will) I should make a few changes:

Switch from extract to all-grain to reduce the cost of brewing it

Incorporate a decent amount of a Caramel/Crystal malt in it to give the beer that caramel flavor it lacks and perhaps sweeten it slightly

Stick with El Dorado hops over Simcoe, as the Simcoe bitterness seemed harsh in this particular recipe

Try using Muscat Grape Juice instead of generic store-brand white grape juice to see if that improves the grape flavor

Rehydrate the Hawthorn Berries in boiling water overnight before blending and incorporating into the beer. They seemed incredibly dry and hard, making me wonder if they provided as much flavor as they could have.

Despite that seemingly large number of potential changes, the as-is recipe above is actually quite good, very smooth, and very easy to drink. If I made no changes at all, I'd still be happy with it.